In summary: They are wanting to put a new crossing over grose river. This bridge is destroying our family’s property and farm. Instead of designing the bridge to follow the existing road and take a small section of our property, it has been designed to cut diagonal and cross straight through our home and farm in order to avoid the 75 acres of vacant land either side of our property. Our family farm is the only one effected in this plan. This bridge won’t be flood proof and will be out of action before north Richmond and Windsor bridge as the lowlands surrounding are the first areas to flood including the Yarramundi bridge. Please help by signing this petition to change the design of the bridge so my family can keep their farm.  

This project has been designed to go through our farming family’s property and directed straight through our family home and farm sheds where we have resided and farmed for 22 years. We are  fifth generation farming family and this farmland supports two families. We bought this property with the intention of living here and eventually retiring here and allowing our son to then continue farming the land as this is his livelihood. Our son and his family live on the same street as us. There is undeveloped vacant land either side of our family farm.

 Yarramundi Bridge is the first bridge in the area to flood. There is also flooding further up Springwood Road which will prevent access both ways in times of flooding. It will not be a flood free access route and will not be suitable for use in times of flooding, especially like the ones we have experienced in the last 2 years.

 Grose wold has dangerous, narrow and very winding feeder roads such as Grose Vale Road, Grose Wold Road, Grose River Road, which will mean many motor vehicle accidents. There is also very poor vison in times that are foggy which has already lead to vehicle accidents in the past. We have experienced a person crash into a car parked in our driveway as she could not see due to the heavy fog on the day. We have also had a car crash into a tree on the side of our driveway.

A large amount of traffic will pass by Grose View Primary School which will be a danger to the young children and provide issues during pickup/dropoff school times. I fear for the safety of the children that will attend this school.

There is a lot of historical significance to our farm. It was farmed by the early settlers and was part of the food basin for the city of Sydney. It was farmed  by William Eaton and Jane Ison and there are some remains of their second house on the property. 

This is one of the very few agricultural properties which is located this close to Sydney with this fertile soil, slope of land allowing for appropriate water drainage and a water licence for irrigating crops from the river in times of drought. Most of the land further west is unfarmable and the destruction of prime agricultural land with such close proximity to the Sydney population is a travesty. Once farmland is gone its gone, and this can lead to issues with food security as farming is one of the most important uses of land and there is limited fertile farmland in Sydney.

We as the property owners have been treated extremely poorly. We have been discriminated against, treated disrespectfully and our emails and phone calls have not been acknowledged, replied to or actioned. There has been a total lack of consultation or communication. We have had a drone fly over our property and film our private property without authorisation and this was posted on social media by Redbank. We had to push the developer and Council GM to have the video taken down from social media.  This instantly took away any option we may have had of selling our property and basically made it unsaleable. We have had to constantly push to get any information or updates and then only provided with minimal information and much irrelevant information. A lot of information regarding our property has not been disclosed to us despite us requesting so.

There has been an Invasion of privacy with investigators entering onto our property. When I specifically informed the authorities that it was too short notice as I had plans and would not be home. When I came back from overseas I found a DA Poster cable tied in front of our house to a telegraph pole and this was how we found out a DA was being lodged. Authorities were aware that we would be overseas and I believe the timing was deliberately done when we were away. We did not receive any letter in the mail until the following week and this was the same standard letter sent to the public saying a DA had been lodged and not specific to our family, the one losing their house, farm and livelihood. We believe there is ways that’s Hawkesbury city council could have handled this situation empathetic as we are losing everything and have been left in the dark for the most of it. 

This was supposed to be a normal Council road and not the large thoroughfare that has been designed to take the weight of heavy vehicles up to 19 metres long according to the Minutes tabled. We have been told that a heavy duty bridge and roadway are being built allowing suitability  for heavy vehicles. Even if they say the load limit should be 5 tonnes, how are they going to monitor which vehicles travel on this road?

The Council currently struggles to maintain the existing roads and there are constant issues with potholes, flooding, visibility, and wear and tear on the feeder roads. All roads would need to be widened and resealed to handle the expected volume of vehicles.

There will be huge disruptions to the local community during construction including traffic jams and delays, loud and heavy machinery, extra damage to roads, impact on bus services and school children, considerable dust, impact on environment by toxic runoffs,  sleep disturbance, road detours, change in water flow, negative impact on flora, fauna and river fish. There will also be considerable destruction to the environment by removing soil and trees that normally absorb water and replacing this with concrete surfaces.